Practical strategies for the role of digital in your business

The mystery of xd_receiver.htm

Too technical for me

Technical Ceiling

I came up to my technical ceiling a few weeks ago when I was analysing some google analytics data for cookandkitchen.com.au
The top exit page was one called xd_receiver.htm. I was puzzled. The page did not exist on my site and yet the data was telling me that this was where most people left from. My mantra about helping clients with Google Analytics is “getting actionable insights”. What on earth was actionable about this? What conclusion was I supposed to draw from this and how could I keep people from running away?
A quick google search told me that it had something to do with some JavaScript being called from Facebook. xd stands for “Cross Domain”. [blank face] Right, this is my my technical ability ended. Now what? Our web developer advised me I could safely ignore it. But that did not sit right with me. So I set out to get in contact with both Facebook and Google to iron this one out.

What do you know! I got a reply from Facebook and a “call from Google” or a “Call from God” as cookandkitchen founder James Wright likes to call it. God is gonna give me buzz back but Facebook also had a good explanation as to why this page appears in the first place.

So, for techies this might mean something:
“xd_receiver.htm is part of the old JavaScript SDK for Facebook connect. This file allows one to load FB Javascript from a server and have it call Facebook’s servers.
This file is required as JavaScript’s security model only allows javascript to call methods on the server the javascript was loaded from. To get around this we have the developer put the xd_receiver.htm file on their server which then allows the Javascript to make calls to the Facebook servers rather than just to the developers servers.” (thanks Facebook)

I understand this is part of the old mechanism for Facebook Connect. We clearly need to upgrade to “login with Facebook”. That is actionable. My mantra. But I am still puzzled why this page comes up as an exit page, but “God” is gonna sort that one out.